A Question of Character
/In an entertaining new study of Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir and company, the existentialist movement becomes a personality-driven piece of public performance.
Read MoreOrestes in Spandex
/Fifty years ago, a daring writer and a quirky artist created an offbeat character who became one of the most famous superheroes in the world. A look at the early days of Spider-Man.
Read MoreIncriminating Bits
/Maggie Nelson’s gripping revisionist memoir of a murder could be considered anti-narrative non-fiction: it at once participates in storytelling and critiques it.
Read MoreBook Review: Eruption
/Nearly 40 years ago, Washington State's Mount St. Helens volcano erupted, killing 57 people and spewing hundreds of tons of molten ash into the atmosphere. A gripping new book tells the story.
Read MoreMirror Writing
/There are two kinds of essayists: explainers and explorers. Which populate the new series from Restless Books about the human face? John Cotter investigates.
Read MoreThe Skin Crowd
/A sumptuous new book lays a vast roll call of frogs before the reader and opens a window onto the strange world of the world's most popular amphibian.
Read MoreI Am Jack's Contested Legacy
/The book Fight Club - and even more so the movie adaptation - have cult fixtures in American culture. But after twenty years, is there anything left for a sequel to subvert? Justin Hickey reads Fight Club 2.
Read MoreAnother Way To See
/John Berger's writing on art often feels more dramatic than analytic, a passionate study of the unspoken transaction between artist and viewer. Robert Minto looks at Portraits.
Read MoreHere to Write
/Kay Boyle, friend to William Carlos Williams, Katherine Anne Porter, and Samuel Beckett, was famous for her short stories but also wrote a lifetime's worth of fascinating letters, now sampled in a new anthology.
Read MoreBook Review: Skeptic
/Popular debater and science writer Michael Shermer's latest book collects some of the columns he's written for Scientific American
Read MoreThe Lost Boy
/A new book studies the history of copyright and the life and legacy of Aaron Swartz, one of copyright's groundbreaking interpreters for the new century.
Read MoreA History of Violence
/When watching a Quentin Tarantino film, critic Max Ross contends, you can never forget you're watching a Quentin Tarantino flim. But is that a strength or a weakness of his latest, The Hateful Eight?
Read MoreIn the Service: Koussevitzky of Boston
/Determining the legacy of Boston’s legendary conductor Serge Koussevitsky is a challenging task. Michael Johnson examines the man, the myth, and the music.
Read MoreBook Review: Cosmosapiens
/A sweeping new overview of the sciences has big ambitions - and some odd sticking points
Read MoreNow in Paperback: Doomed
/Now in paperback: a densely-packed graphic novel in which Superman slowly becomes his worst enemy
Read MoreSlaves in the Empire of Intellect
/Before he was a famous and controversial philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche was a young professor with a bone to pick. Robert Minto discusses his critique of higher education.
Read MoreMy Disappearance
/A professor of Creative Writing discovers he is the main character in one of his student's stories, and the picture he's presented with is eerily spot on. A memoir of a dangerous profession.
Read MoreWatching the Waves Roll In
/Robert Lax was always moving, both poetically and geographically. A new biography tells the story of his uncommon life.
Read MoreRomantics without Rebellion
/In the 1930s, a handful of clubbable Christian scribblers got together for tea and conversation and produced both The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. What on earth went on there?
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